


The Untold Tales

by historiareiss



Category: Greek Mythology, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 16:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17707724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiareiss/pseuds/historiareiss
Summary: I hope to make this project into a series of introspective short stories about my favourite women from Greek mythology, starting with Circe, since most poets and the storytellers of old carefully omitted to give these formidable women their own voice.





	The Untold Tales

  1. CIRCE




The day I set eyes upon the white, ragged sails of his battered ship, I knew. I had been the daughter of a prophetic god, long ago, after all, and my father's gift had passed down to me, in spite of my halfhearted filial devotion.

His men preceded him, and I welcomed them all on my shore, but I won't waste my breath over the likes of them and what I made of them. They were arrogant, and greedy, and lascivious, and fragile, like mortals often are, and they were better off as pigs anyway.

He, though, he was the sole specimen of his kind. He presented himself as some sailor from Argos, and I knew it to be a lie right away. A wit as sharp as his couldn't be merely some sailor's. But he was starving, so I fed him. He regarded everything I gave him with wary eyes, yet clever enough not to let his suspicion show. But I was a mistress of treachery, every inch as skillful as him, so I noticed how he inspected the boar on his plate, as if his mortal eyes could detect witchery.

Where were his companions, anyway?

He did not ask until later that night, after the coupling. I hadn't had a man in over a century, for my own prickly pride would deem everyone beneath me. Why was this one different?

When he asked about his comrades, I was sitting upright on the bed's edge, bathing in the moonlight that seeped from the silk curtains. I felt silver, and young again. In hindsight, I truly was young back then, and thus I took offence that he could have a thought for them, even when I was right under his eyes, looking so beautiful and divine.

I learned later that he seldom forgot himself and his duties. My beauty, the prowess of my love-making or even my pleas could nothing against the sharpness of his intent. I told him once that, in that, he was not unlike us witches. We must sharpen our intent like a river stone before a spell, if we hope to succeed. He laughed at the parallel, but I could see from the shadow across his brow that he did not find it flattering. In the end I had to turn back the swines into those pitiful excuses for men that he called his crew, in order to please him and keep him by me.

A year he stayed on Aiaia, under my roof, in my bed, in my arms. The warmth that radiated from his limbs was the greatest pleasure I drew from him, second only to the stories he would share, and his wisecracks. Seldom I had met, in all my years as the sun's daughter, a warmer source of light.

His wounds were endearing, and the way he used to try and hide them filled me with a biting urge to tend to them. Gods, we heal fast, but a mortal is as fragile as a bluebird and every broken bone requires several months to be set aright. And his men were even more mangled, thankfully, so they had dire need of my potions to heal.

They spent a year by me, and had all the time to heal and frolic about my gardens and woods, so much that they grew sick of the idleness. These were men of action, and although they were just now coming from a battlefield, they already craved another. I began to fear their poisonous tongues, for I knew that when I was out of earshot, they pressed their case to Odysseus incessantly, and although he first rejected them, I knew he was now beginning to crack under their pressure.

It was at dawn, when he came to me, that I knew our peaceful idyll was at an end. I had risen early from our bed because I couldn't bear feeling him so close to me, asleep, and knowing that he will be gone by tomorrow. So I was now sitting on a rock by the cliff's edge, with my lioness at my side. She was my faithful familiar, and I summoned her when I needed to feel like the proud females of her kind myself.

“Circe,” he muttered, under his breath. Had I not been waiting for him, I would not have even heard him. Able, clever Odysseus, who has faced a thousand trials and overcome them with his wit, was now cowering before me like some unmanned rabbit. “I have come to a decision.”

“Have you? It was about time.” The wind was strong and fierce, it was cutting at my cheekbones. Perfect for sailing. The gods, my life-long adversaries, were clearly blessing his enterprise, and would speed up his journey home with favourable winds. “Say it, then.”

I wept, and raged, and wept again. The lioness at my side, that had always shown him regard, was now menacingly baring her teeth to him. I was accustomed to loss by then, and yet it never ceased to give me pleasure, having mortal outlets for my mortal emotions. It made me feel like I was weak too, and alive, and with my days numbered.

“Do not weep for me, my sweet... You knew it was my fate to sail back to Ithaca, to Penelope.”

Her name was like an ice splinter in my eye. I stopped weeping at once, the tears dried on their own. I turned away from the cliff and my lioness followed me. The unruly wind was still ruffling my vest.

Even in his stories of war and home, that I liked above all else, her name always spoiled my mood when it came up, and I could no longer focus on the rest of Odysseus' telling, so over time he stopped mentioning her, and the unspoken name “Penelope” became yet one more wound on his heart, one that not even my potent witchcraft could heal.

“I am no jailer. All the time you have spent by me, you have spent willingly. But now your conscience is eating at you, and the ghosts of those you've left behind are digging their claws in your heart when you sleep. What can I say? Be on your way, Odysseus, son of Laertes. May the gods favour your return to those you cherish.”

The wind carried my words to him, and made them sound more detached, cold, hard, of which I felt grateful. It would make the parting easier.

“I cherished you too, for however long the gods would allow me.”

I would have gladly pushed him off the cliff he was standing on. He always had a way with words. They were like polished blades in his hands, which he could use to his convenience. And I hated when he used his wiles to trick me, too, as if I were one of those dim-witted Trojans on the battlements of their fallen city, the ones he convinced to accept the deadly token he had laid out for them on the nearby beach.

Gods were the petty excuse of vile men who could not keep their promises. I would have defied even the greatest of them for him, but all this, I kept for myself. Why would I let him know the actual weight of my heart? He would not be delayed anymore. He had a wife, a son and a land to go back to. I would only debase myself for nothing.

I watched from my window, refusing to go bid them farewell from the beach. It all ended as it began, only in reverse; the white sails shifting further and further from my sight on the water, instead of approaching. Due to the similarity of what I had already witnessed a thousand times in my life, I could not be pained over the loss of him for long. My life had been a constant streak of the same events over and over again, only with a few diverse coincidences gracefully adjusted to make them look just a tad bit different from the last time, but still fairly equivalent in their method. I suppose immortals run a groove in the world in order to keep their immortality, and they hardly ever experience anything new, or exceptional enough to affect them permanently.

 


End file.
